Richmond Examiner, “is the most mortifying feature of the war.” The editor of the Lynchburg Virginian charged that prosperous farmers “were grinding the faces of the poor, and destroying the cause of their country.” A former army officer observed the speculation and fortunes that were being made in tobacco and wrote, “Lynchburg has gone mad—running stark mad—men, women & children— … all tobacco—tobacco—from morning till night from night till morning.” Public meetings in Amherst, Buckingham, and Nelson counties denounced speculation and urged that the state legislature ban the growing of tobacco. Virginia governor William Smith, in his inaugural address in January 1864, called for a legal ceiling on prices. Even Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who knew that inflation occurs “where the amount to be sold is too small for the number of consumers” and who urged a “radical reform of the currency,” joined in the chorus against speculators. He lamented that “love of lucre” had “eaten like a gangrene into the very heart of the land.” The